Climate, Soil, Food, Health: It’s All Connected
by Steffen Schneider. Photos: Lawrence Braun.
“In living nature nothing happens that does not stand in a relationship to the whole, and if experiences appear to us only in isolation, if we are to look upon experiences solely as isolated facts, that is not to say that they are isolated; the question is, how are we to find the relationship of these phenomena, of these givens?”
In 2020, just before coronavirus became a household reality, The Institute for Mindful Agriculture (IMA) hosted a winter workshop with the theme “Climate – Soil – Food – Health – It’s all connected”. This quote by Goethe expresses one reason why we chose the theme, knowing that its scope and complexity could be overwhelming. Nevertheless, if this is in fact our reality, how can we best hold it, and come away with a deeper understanding as well as actionable inspiration, would then be the question. I would characterize my workshop learnings with the following six headlines:
1. We need to transition to Biodynamic-Regenerative Agriculture
While currently less than 1% of US farmland is managed organically, let alone regeneratively or biodynamically, many reasons point towards the necessity to speed a transformation. Agricultural practices like minimum tillage, cover cropping, crop rotations, livestock integration, no use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, create healthy soils and crops with higher nutritional and storage qualities. And one common counter argument, that this type of agriculture cannot produce enough food for an increasing population, is being dispelled. The so-called yield gap between industrial and organic agriculture is shrinking and by taking the better keeping qualities into account might become negligible. Also, with more and more extreme weather events in our future we need agriculture to create resilient landscapes to withstand heavy rain, extended droughts and make our landscapes overall less susceptible to climate-change-induced affronts. One irony here is that this type of agriculture not only helps remediate damaging climate effects it will also most likely be negatively impacted by the more and more extreme and unpredictable weather events.
2. Carbon Sequestration is a misleading expression
When one gets to “know” carbon a bit better it becomes apparent that it is a very dynamic element – always connecting and “breathing”. Through photosynthesis it connects us to the unbelievably abundant sun energy which is the source of all life on the earth. Vast acreages of bare, open land in the Midwest each year do not contribute to this connection. In all life processes and life forms carbon is present in an interplay of growth and decay, inbreath and outbreath. When Rudolf Steiner suggests that the soils on our farms are functionally akin to our own diaphragm, maybe this underlines this essential point. During the last two centuries or so we have “thrown” these processes out of balance through our lifestyles. We need to “slow down” the carbon exhalation of the planet by planting perennials and especially trees; by not cutting down the rain forest and burning excessive amounts of “fossil carbon” in the form of oil and gas. Our soils are the major carbon sink on the earth and healthy soils that grow healthy plants will need to and can become a major factor in the “re-balancing” of the carbon dynamic. A humus rich and biologically active soil can furnish plants with sufficient amounts of assimilatory carbon dioxide. Describing these phenomena as “carbon sequestration” is an oversimplification and doesn’t do full justice to the living dynamic that is in play.
3. Ruminants and especially cows are soil health builders, not “climate killers”
Ruminants are a crucial link in the carbon dynamic because they are able to digest cellulose, the basic framework of all plant forms – this digestive miracle includes the formation of methane that the cows release into the atmosphere. While this makes them an easy target for climate activists we overlook and forget that the interaction between grasslands and ruminants has resulted in some of the most fertile soils on the planet, for instance the prairie soils in the middle of the United States. And today we also need these animals re-integrated into our landscapes and farms everywhere where growing crops for human consumption is not possible or advisable. This needs to happen in a balanced way, one reason why the fundamental picture offered by Biodynamics of a “Farm-organism” can be so helpful. Thus, the manure and manure compost will provide the fertility basis to enable the growing of crops for human needs. By disrupting the grassland-ruminant symbiosis we’ve created waste disposal and pollution issues and have turned a magnificent and generative being - the cow - into the symbol of human hubris and greed. Just imagine if all the investment capital, or at least a good part of it, that is currently funding the so-called “plant-based-meat industry” would be funding the transformation to regenerative and biodynamic agriculture. This could help restore the value of truly plant based meats from ruminants. Lastly, just recently it’s been discovered that anthropogenic methane contributes much more significantly to the climate crisis than had been assumed to date.
4. Our food choices (diets) matter very much
What we eat has a direct impact on agriculture and our landscapes. It is an area where we have much agency. So, what constitutes a “climate diet”, that creates and supports health for the planet and us? “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much”, Michael Pollan’s postulate from 2009, still holds much validity in this context. Cutting down rainforests and conversion of those acres into cattle grazing land to support our “beef habit” is not helpful for sure. Our dietary choices can directly support the re-creation of regional and local food sheds and resilient landscapes with a diversity of grain and vegetable crops, trees, forests, ruminant and other livestock.
5. Cultivating our inner soils is as important as fostering soil health on the Earth
The preceding headlines make we wonder, with all this knowledge and facts, why can’t we address these evident needs and make the necessary changes? Why does there exist this knowledge-action-gap? Would it help to close it, if we could move from an “aboutness- understanding” to a withness-understanding”? I am wondering if the current climate crisis is the ultimate expression of this necessary change. Aren’t we all “within” the climate and weather? We cannot really externalize this crisis unless we all abandon our planet. I would suggest that regular attention to our “inner soils” can help us move to a “withness”-attitude. Spending time in nature to tune and cultivate our senses as well as finding and creating moments of concentration and meditation in stillness and silence are “regenerative” practices of this “personal agriculture”. Maybe these practices also offer a potential and direct positive carbon effect. Rudolf Steiner suggests that we retain a little more carbon dioxide when we meditate.
6. Only through true collaboration will the future emerge in a healthy way
One fundamental tenet of our work at IMA is the conviction that only collaboration across all our diversity, which includes the diversity of knowing, will we be able to create the conditions to allow the future to emerge in a way that will let the Earth live out her biography. How could that look like? I think the workshop was a valiant but very small and incomplete attempt in that direction. Going forward we can learn from our ecological soils here. The multitudes of lifeforms in healthy soil – bacteria, fungi, microbes, beetles, worms and on and on – create fertility through their relational network. Not in isolation but in reciprocal interdependence, constantly balancing decay and regeneration – letting go and letting come. Can we learn to recognize that we all need one another? Trust arises through careful listening and respectful, nuanced conversation. In this context trust serves the function of humus in earth’s soils; it creates the foundation on which a healthy and resilient social soil teeming with diversity and life can grow, holding each other’s gifts and questions and becoming ever more “fertile”.
I have such deep appreciation and gratitude to each and every one who came and participated in the workshop. From presentations, walks, sharing meals, and discussion, I actively hope that we will keep cultivating the “social soil” that began to emerge.
As I began with a Goethe quote, allow me to end with one also:
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
